Does anyone know if future missions will be completed by various nations and what are they? where to next? and why? why to Mars with 'humans' and not 'robots'? anybody know? what can we learn by 'being there' "in the flesh' that we can't from having sensor equipment?

Can anyone please explain if they believe that the future of space travel belongs  (long term) to 'nanotechnology'?? 

I believe the next set of NASA missions will be to our moon in order to establish a moonbase by 2020 as outlined in NASA's 5-year 'flight plan'.  The Japanese have an orbiter in lunar orbit now . . .  infact, they just performed a planned crash into the lunar surface (June 8th) to get readings on the ejecta.   See enterprisemission.com footage of the impact.

 NASA's plan is to have a lunar landing completed in 2019 and to build a permanent lunar base at the south pole in 2024. Other countries don't have exact timelines or plans for space travel on this scale as far as I know.

 The point of manned exploration is to begin to colonize other worlds and effectively exploit the resources of space for the benefit of mankind. We have to start somewhere and even though these missions may be a bit expensive (or very expensive) they will have important long term benefits.

Now do you really expect humans to stay on Earth forever?

Kyle:

Now do you really expect humans to stay on Earth forever?

Of course not.  I expect us to become extinct.

 With the capability to travel between stars in a few years of months, possible only with warp drive (which is impossible now but could eventually be developed), people could pretty much be alive somewhere indefinitely.

 With the capability to terraform Mars and Venus, and nudge Earth's, Mars's and Venus's orbits to compensate for changes in solar activity, we could last several billion years.

If all we did was build self-sufficient habitats on the Moon and in Earth orbit, as well as bigger, more advanced space probes, we could deflect dangerous asteroids and would last about a billion years or so, maybe a bit less.

I don't think it's possible for humans to go completely extinct except from disease, destructive sun behavior and asteroid/comet impact. Whatever large scale war there might be, there will always be some people living in New Guinea and Bangladesh and Cameroon and whatever that won't get hit by the trillions of nukes getting thrown around. And war will only destroy a significant chunk of the world's population if the two sides are precisely evenly matched and the war goes on forever with countless large-scale nuclear/thernomuclear attacks. Even so people will still be alive somewhere.

If there is a really bad famine that kills, say, 90% of the population, the last 10% will have plenty of room to expand and grow crops, and the population will grow. Then (hopefully) they will have learned their lesson and will get better at growing food to prevent future famine.

But we know that the sun will explode in five billion years, maybe slightly sooner, maybe slightly later. And we know that the sun will increase its output in one billion years and will boil all the water of surface of the Earth. Unless you want to evolve into bacteria we're screwed. The only ways to stop extinction are to use gravity from an asteroid or something to pull Earth into a farther orbit and keep us safe, or move to another planet.

Either way, space exploration has to continue.

I'm in my 40's and remember the glory days of Apollo. The US did a spectacular job with the modern day equivalent of hand axes and clovis points. It is amazing that only 3 men lost their lives.

The country needed that goal to reach the moon, it helped heal the Korean War from a decade before and probably kept the country from a complete meltdown during the 60's. The landing was one of those "moments" that will stay a part of every one of us who actually witnessed it.

I was disappointed when Cernan and company left that final time. I hoped it wouldn't be too long until we went back.

15 years ago I was still doing what I could to keep manned missions in the minds of my representatives. Then I had the opportunity to speak to one of the Apollo moonwalkers. My company was doing some work on the Johnson Space Center. In one of the truly spectacular events in my life, this astronaut walked into a meeting to give his input. It is the only time I have ever been starstruck (what do ask a person who has walked on another rock?) and it took me a minute to regain composure. After the meeting we had lunch and he told me many stories and we looked at the Apollo 1 capsule and the rover trainer.

It was 4 hours of my life that I can replay in perfect detail to this day.

Anyhow, it was that meeting that started changing my thinking. I no longer fully support manned missions at this time.

It requires far fewer resources to send robotic missions to the Moon and Mars. Here is the biggie. We have lost many lives during the shuttle program, each time threatening to shut down the whole program. When a machine is lost it is an economic loss, losing people takes it to a whole new level.

If we spend billions and billions of dollars to send a few people back to the Moon we are not really gaining any more science than machines with a few sample return missions can do at much lower cost and risk. If we lose people on a mission "to bring back more grey rocks" (as the public will see it) the whole program will go up in smoke. Lose a robot and Nasa will called idiots which is a much easier thing to come back from.

Sending people to Mars entails even more unknown risk that the Moon program did 40 years ago. There are technical issues that an Apollo type run may not overcome, even if we could get up the same level of public support. There are no more "commies" to show up. Our enemies just don't care about a space race. Trying to start some kind of race with Asia will not work. The public is just going to say "let them spend all that money and die".

My concern is human failure. I keep hearing how its the same thing as early explorers to the New World. That only works until the craft leaves Earth orbit. Then all bets are off. The New World explorers could stand on the deck and breath the air. They also had a good shot at finding resources at the destination.

Sure Mars has resources but do we know how to mine them? Even if we send cargo ships ahead, what happens if there is a problem that never transmitted? Are 4 to 6 people going to hold up for 3 years? There is no psych test to insure that no one will have a meltdown. Hell they won't even be able to have a conversation to anyone back home because of the delay.

 Sorry, I didn't mean to go on so long. I really believe that we need 2 decades of major engineering and science breakthroughs, not upgrades, before we send people away.

 I like your optimism but.....

Faster than light propulsion would be cool, that whole relativity things throws a wrench in the works. It might be good for the crew to only take 3 or 4 years roundtrip but to return to Earth where the local (daylight savings time, of course) time is a few millinea later isn't viable.

Warp drive? Yes, there are theories that might work but, even if somebody, right now, at JPL sits up and screams "It might work!" (Young Frankenstein homage). He could only produce enough power using all the generators on Earth to warp a proton from one side of the room to the other. Since we all like having our lights on, a whole new energy needs to be tapped. It might be hundreds of years before we could send a whole atom.

We don't even have the technology in place for a "Star Trek" type impulse drive to zip around the solar system. We have to zip around a gravity well to alter course. No doing a U-turn. Yes, we have Ion drive but it takes about a year for people to travel from Florida to the Moon.

The whole idea that a billion years is "just a tick away", think about history up to now. Counting backwards we've had 4 major extinctions, 3 (maybe 4) continental reconfigs., and at least 3 whole ecosystems evolve from bugs to dominance to extinction. Mother nature is a (ahem) witch. I'm not counting on our "advanced technology" that, for the most part, was developed to kill each other to keep us alive from any threats. If 10% of the human population survives "a trillion" nukes, or an impact, they would kill each other off by forming into tribes intent on ruling the world.

To be serious, I love the fact that science is cool and that pop culture has moved many into being the "real deal" (myself included). We will someday (hopefully) become a "Star Trek" technological society. We may have communicators (cell phones), the computer, and rudimentary robotics but we are very far off from even contemplating colonization of the Moon or Mars.

Maybe some kid will figure something out in his garage that changes this but for now we need to slow down, fix our problems as a species, and do it right.

Even the stars themselves die, and so it will be for us.  Nuclear war will fatally poison the entire planet and the ensuing nuclear winter will kill all mega-fauna that manages to suffer through the radiation.  Comets have no stop signs, neither do GRBs or even the possibility that our star is variable.  The probability that we are doomed to extinction is 98% based on the history of life on this planet, in fact I would rate it at 99.9% based on our ability to wipe ourselves out either quickly or slowly over time.  What other species on this planet had the intellegence, or lack thereof, to develop three different ways to wipe out every human who ever lived?  (Think Nuclear, Chemical, & Biological).  If most of the world is wiped out and technology becomes a memory how long do you think the stockpiles of these things will remain sealed away?  Isolated groups living at the poverty level will not only fall prey to natural toxins and diseases but add on the layer of man-made stuff getting out decades or centuries hence and it looks pretty grim for all concerned. I am sure too that we will have learned nothing form TEOTWAWKI and the lazy and strong will take from the hard- working and weak.  Perhaps Planet of the Apes isn't so far fetched at all?

As to manned spaceflight it is a luxury that only the rich can afford.  If we launch three to five people to Mars or the Moon and they are caught by a solar flare or CME then it is game over for everyone.  I love manned spaceflight but if we can't afford to do it right then lets not blow a bunch of money now that could have been sent sending robots to do the science as well as sending back the pretty pictures we all enjoy.  At least we can send them before they figure out that they don't really need us around anyway.

As for terraforming Venus that is pretty well a doomed effort and Mars should only be done if there is no life there and even then it remains cost prohibitive.  And the same reasons apply to Europa or Titan. We have no business messing up these places where life one day may arise if it already hasn't just because we want to pollute them with our own garbage and precious DNA. I don't want us to be the evil aliens stripping other planets for resouces like those in Independence Day.  If there be 'Whales" living in the Europian Deep you can bet not everyone on this rock would be content to to just observe them and leave them be. Whether it be carny or culinary they will be exploited.

We have quite a nice home, lets take care of it and ourselves better before we attempt to spread our selfish madness across the solar system and perhaps one day to the stars.  After all, if there is someone else out there they may not be too happy to see us coming around.

Eh Gort?

L

 From your mouth to Kirk's ears my friend.

 Looking at the time of your posting, you are magically hours ahead of me! I still have 5 more days til the BBQ nad you have but 4! Since there already exists a time warp right here, why expend the energy of the Sun to make an artificial one!

Cheers,

Frank

This thread has gotten very interesting .  I love your optomisim, Kyle.  It is people with your outlook who will take our species however far we go.  Although, my comment about extinction, and the ensuing posts by Leo731 and Frankmon, may seem like fatalism I don't believe that they are.  As a species, as well as individuals, it is far more important how we live than how long.  If science has taught us anything it is that all things made of matter and energy are transient and will pass.  There have been some excellent examples listed of some of the ways that passing may come to pass.  How many more are they that we can not foresee?

Extinction is okay.  Extinction is a natural step in the evolutionary process for every species, just as death is a natural step in the development of an individual.  I would rather that our species learned to cooperate  with and appreciate one another rather than expending so much energy --emotional and physical -- in trying to avoid the unavoidable.  There are individuals who expend a huge amount of their resources to try and stave off the effects of time, and who, in so doing, make themselves into gross caricatures of what they were . . . and then they die.

Let's not do that as a species.

zachsdad:

I would rather that our species learned to cooperate  with and appreciate one another rather than expending so much energy --emotional and physical -- in trying to avoid the unavoidable.  There are individuals who expend a huge amount of their resources to try and stave off the effects of time, and who, in so doing, make themselves into gross caricatures of what they were . . . and then they die

If a future spacefaring warping zen-hole type of dude happened upon the remains of our civilization it would be nice to think that he/she/it would think we were pretty cool for our planet and time and not a bunch of self-destructive morons.

Spaceflight, as I understand it, may be one of those ways that would make us look younger by speading out our spines making us look taller.  Of course this is temporary but then so too is botox.

L

I have specific thoughts regarding the human race and what will eventually happen to us, but I'd get in trouble talking about that here.

On manned spaceflight, lest we forget the technological and scientific advances which have been made in just about every aspect of our lives. Those discoveries happened to have been made by men and woman in space!  I suppose millions of us might be dead already had we not reached for the stars.  Life is a risk and the human exploration of space and the risks associated with it are well known and accepted by those brave enough to participate in such human endeavours.  I'd rather spend my tax dollars on supporting that rather than the trillions being wasted as we speak!  Anyway, that's my two cents on space missions!

Cheers and keep looking up,

Joe

 Fascinating observations by all with considerable clarity.  I do tend to concur with Frank and Leo regarding our rather limited future prospects in space as we now exist as a species and as a collective technological culture.  I believe our acquisitive nature and audacity has proven very destructive and maladaptive for this planet at least.  It is likely that any biota discovered elsewhere would be exploited and likely imperiled by our "interests".  Mankind is woefully ignorant and self-obsessed at this juncture in our evolution; hubris characterizes us to a large extent, unfortunately.

Additionally, physically we are a pathetically weak and inadequate species to colonize other worlds with much harsher environmental conditions. Star Trekkie space voyagers are a laughable concept at best.  We must re-engineer the human genome to create new and novel iterations of the human strain to accommodate space travel and colonization requirements on other physically inimical worlds.  We are perhaps centuries away from perfecting these sciences and , of course, dealing with all the shifting ethical concerns intrinsic in them.  Mankind must evolve culturally, biologically (with help from geneticists) and technologically for effective and enduring space pursuits.  We're simply not "the right stuff" just yet my new friends!!

You said the magic word 'expensive'! we cannot afford the travel required with HUMANS aboard! even if technology improves, surely 'nanotechnology' and it's refinements will enable us to accelerate the 'speed' of future missions and continue to also exploit (ugly word, stuff up the earth and then other planets!) the resources of other planets 'light years away' rather than 'kms' away!

The future of 'nano' will see speed accelerated in space to deliver first the 'eyes' (10 yrs) and then the actual 'hands' to enable 'human simulation techniques' to takeover ALL human interactions with space assets! No sci fi! just realastic economics, since the 'price' of future space missions will be very relevant in a 'bankrupt' wotld economy!! 

Kyle, the sun will not explode.  It is not massive enough.  Red giant stage(s) is(are) expected.

dracul:

Additionally, physically we are a pathetically weak and inadequate species to colonize other worlds with much harsher environmental conditions. Star Trekkie space voyagers are a laughable concept at best.  We must re-engineer the human genome to create new and novel iterations of the human strain to accommodate space travel and colonization requirements on other physically inimical worlds.  We are perhaps centuries away from perfecting these sciences and , of course, dealing with all the shifting ethical concerns intrinsic in them.  Mankind must evolve culturally, biologically (with help from geneticists) and technologically for effective and enduring space pursuits.  We're simply not "the right stuff" just yet my new friends!!

I would certainly hope we would not genetically alter our species just for space travel. I totally disagree with your statement that we are pathetically weak and an inadequate species. Thousands of years ago the human element colonized most of this rock. Maybe not in the way you see it today, but there were humans living and surviving in harsher conditions than exist today over most of the planet. I think us to be one of the strongest/healthiest species on this rock.

With your thought process, no one would have thought to make the first sailing ships to cross the vast expanse of waters between continents. We would not have taken the time to build the first telescope, the first steam engine, the first plane or the first rocket. These were thought of and built by robust individuals who were doing it to find out what was over that hill, that mountain, that ocean or across the heavens. Why? Beacuse we wanted to go there, we wanted to be the first to say it has been done, first to climb that mountain, first to cross a continent, first to cross that ocean and first to make it into space.

I believe the human species is doing just fine on its path of discovery. Imagination brought about "Star Trek" and it also brought about our frist moon landings. Do you call that laughable? If we can imagine traveling at the speed of light, warping space, or folding space don't you think that someday we may be able to accomplish that?

When I was in grammar school I remember reading a science fiction book on space travel where the mode of propulsion was an "Ion Drive". That's about 45 years ago, I know I am dating myself now, but now it is not science fiction, it is science fact.

It is not that we are not an adequate species and that we need to be genetically enhanced. That is pure hogwash. It is that as a species we are not quite ready technology wise. We will get there and if it is anything like the last 10,000 years of human existance it is going to be one hell of a ride.

I just hope in my next life I get to see some of it.

 I don't think that humanity will ever fully go extinct unless the Sun does something weird (like that) or an asteroid pummels Earth. Otherwise, there will always be some primitive tribespeople living on New Guinea.

 But the only way to keep world society from collapsing with the next two centuries is if we colonize other worlds. With oil production going to peak in about 5-20 years, do you really think that we can just bumble along the way we are and wait for some 25th century Einstein to come up with a hyperdrive device? No. World resources are running out, and if we don't start jumping into space, humanity won't be able to continue progressing. 

 If we run out of fossil fuels before getting a good foothold on other worlds, society will go backwards, not forwards. We need oil for: plastics, gasoline, chemicals, rocket fuel, jet fuel, lubricant, and many others. Some are irreplaceable, some not so much. So we need to start moving ahead as fast as we can. That means nuclear thermal rockets in the short term, antimatter propulsion in the medium term, and 'hyperdrive' or whatever in the long term. It sounds like science fiction now, but so did Sputnik.

Until the human race invents ridiculously cheap space propulsion systems, we will not have any large-scale colonization of other worlds.  As for resources, it will still be cheaper to expand solar, wind, tidal, and nuclear power than it would be to leave Earth to find energy elsewhere, helium-3 notwithstanding.  On the Moon or Mars, we would, at most, have enclosed colonies, which would cost $trillions to build.  The solar system has no other worlds that we could practically colonize on a large scale.  For the most part, humans will adapt to continued life on Earth to a point, then go extinct within millions or years for whatever reason as zachdad suggests.

Hello Kyle,

Very wise words indeed.  But where would we get the money for such projects?????......We first need to get back on track with our economy before we even can consider any such projects.

MarieD